Many vendors such as large grocery chains, convenience stores, and retailers have problems with shrinkage (theft) of small, high priced items such as cigarettes, batteries, stop-smoking aids, replacement razor heads, home pregnancy test kits, and perfume. Several vendors have taken these items off the retail shelves and count on labor to deliver them in the check-out area near a point-of-sale device (“POS”) such as a cash register. Moving small, high priced items from the shelves to, for example, behind a counter or behind locked windows only guards against customer theft; it does not guard against employee theft. Thus, other vendors have chosen to remove small, high priced items from their stock entirely.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2004/0099734 (published May 27, 2004 and identifying Barton et al. as inventors) (the “Barton application”) discloses an apparatus and method for a customer to purchase physically absent products (products that are not collectable by customers in the store or accessible by employees such as cashiers) at the same time that he purchases products that he has collected and brought to the POS. Embodiments include both cashier-operated and self-scanning POS devices. A customer brings his collected products to either style POS, and the cashier or customer scan or otherwise input product identification information to the POS. At that time, the customer or cashier can also select products in addition to those that the customer has collected from the store and brought to the POS, by making selections on a device such as a touch-screen. The cost of the selected items is added to the entire bill. The selected items are dispensed at the POS. Thus, the customer pays once for all products, the products he has collected and brought to the POS and the products he has selected from a touch-screen at the POS and that are subsequently dispensed.
The Barton application may disclose an apparatus that allows for the purchase of small, high priced items without giving customers and certain employees access to them until after they are purchased. The apparatus of the Barton application, however, is large, complicated, and expensive, requiring significant custom modification of a POS and taking up valuable space in the immediate area of the POS.
Another effort to combat shrinkage has been taken up by the Norwegian-based company Vensafe. The Vensafe system provides vending of products from a vending machine that may be remote from a POS. Product displays within the store and/or at the point of sale include cards having a picture of the products available in the vending machine and a corresponding bar code. After the customer select cards for products he wants to purchase, the cards are presented first to a POS for purchase and then to a second device, a peripheral card reader, for validation. The customer then takes the validated cards to the vending machine and inserts them into a reader. The vending machine dispenses products corresponding to the validated cards. The cards remain in a receptacle in the vending machine for future reuse.
The Vensafe system may combat shrinkage. Vensafe's system, however, is large, expensive, and complicated. In the Vensafe system, a store displays cards with bar codes on them corresponding to the products they represent. At the POS, the cashier or customer must present multiple cards representing the multiple products the customer wishes to buy to a scanner for purchasing and to a second peripheral device for validation. After the transaction is complete, the customer must present the validated cards, a third time, to the vending machine to collect the products. The cards are accumulated in a bin inside the vending machine and must then be manually sorted for reuse and redisplayed in the store.
Thus, a need exists for the automated dispensing of products that are high in value or susceptible to theft.